Labour and the Experience of Exploitation

Emmanuel Renault (Université Paris Nanterre) will join Dramaturgies of Resistance for a lecture and workshop on Friday, April 21. In these two events, Renault will address the return of labour within critical theory and the experience of exploitation in theories of domination.

In his morning lecture, entitled "Abolishing division of labour or making it better?," Renault will speak on Axel Honneth’s account of democracy and the division of labour.

The afternoon workshop will take up Renault’s manuscript Exploités and include responses by Nicole Yokum (University of Toronto, St. George), Natasha Hay (University of Toronto, Scarborough), and Matthew Delhey (University of Toronto, St. George).

Those interested in participating in the workshop should email Matthew Delhey ([email protected]) to obtain the reading materials.

Schedule:

Lecture:               10:00 — 12:00 p.m. ("Abolishing division of labour or making it better?")

Lunch break:      12:00 — 1:30 p.m.

Workshop on "The Experience of Exploitation" (Part Three of Exploités)

Session 1:            1:30 — 2:30 p.m. (précis by Emmanuel Renault; comments by Nicole Yokum)

Break:                  2:30 — 2:45 p.m.

Session 2:            2:45 — 3:45 p.m. (comments by Natasha Hay)

Break:                  3:45 — 4:00 p.m.

Session 3:            4:00 — 5:00 p.m. (comments by Matthew Delhey)

Excerpt from Exploités: "The term exploitation is frequently employed in everyday language, and it is the object of a renewed interest in various contemporary political projects, yet it remains largely discredited in the academic fields of social philosophy, political theory and critical social sciences. If exploitation is frequently considered to be uninteresting in these fields, it is more often due to prejudice rather than because it is not a concept that merits serious discussion. Academic disinterest in exploitation is therefore intellectually and politically problematic. We have already suggested that exploitation lies at the heart of a revival that is politically significant. This sets a mandate for social philosophy, political theory, and critical social science to think about exploitation in a new way. Hence the twofold objective of this book: to dismantle the foundations of the academic consensus that sees the concept of exploitation as theoretically less interesting than other critical concepts or even as a politically useless or dangerous concept; to rethink the meaning and functions of the concept of exploitation in accordance with contemporary renewals of the critique of exploitation the theorisations to which they give rise."

Emmanuel Renault is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris Nanterre. He is the author of numerous publications on Hegel, Marx, and pragmatism within the tradition of critical theory. His books in English include The Experience of Injustice: A Theory of Recognition (Columbia University Press, 2019), Marx and Critical Theory (Brill, 2018), and The Return of Work in Critical Theory: Self, Society, Politics (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Date and time: Friday, April 21, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Location: JHB 100 at the Jackman Humanities Building (262 Bloor St W)